Cyberspace: An Astral Realm

I recently wrote a couple of articles for my column at Patheos’ Pagan channel about cyberspace and witchcraft. This sparked a very interesting discussion among my clan about the nature of cyberspace in general. I don’t know if any of you are science fiction fans, but a theme in the genre that you often see or read about involves someone projecting their consciousness into a computer system and navigating it as though it were its own internal reality.

Did you ever try to have a conversation with someone while he or she is on Facebook or Twitter? Kind of like talking to a wall, isn’t it? As my life partner pointed out, “when you’re surfing the net, you’re not really here.”

So where are you then? The answer is cyberspace, its own realm, in which your spirit engages with the spirits of others similarly travelling. This is especially true when you are actively connecting through social media; visualizing, texting, messaging, blogging, sexting, tweeting, googling, broadcasting, podcasting, vodcasting, gaming, skyping and chatting. It’s another dimension that doesn’t really exist in time or space; and doesn’t that make it, to the perspective of a magick-worker, an astral realm?

It’s a sobering thought! Surfing the net, therefore, is astral travelling of a sort. And there are all kinds of procedures and precautions that we take when we astral travel – and would never think of doing it without them! – which don’t even cross our minds when surfing the web or engaging in social media. From that perspective, Second Life and Minecraft and World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs become pocket-universes, with their own set of rules and physics, into which we send our astral bodies to play and accomplish goals. And we do it entirely unguarded, unprotected, and with reckless disregard for the reality of the situation. It’s no wonder that texting and driving are mutually exclusive activities; you certainly wouldn’t want to go on a shamanic vision quest in rush hour traffic!

And have you ever noticed that things never take the length of time you think they’re going to take when you’re online? Usually you say, “Just give me a minute to answer this post,” and then you look up and three hours have passed? Mythology and fairy tales tell us that this is a typical symptom of having been wandering in the lands of the Fair Folk; a traveller thinks she’s been gone for a day, but five years have passed. Now granted, web-surfing is not as extreme, but it’s noticeable. Perhaps we should make some effort to maintain contact with the physical world, such as setting some kind of alarm or egg timer to keep track of the time that is actually passing; or eat something to ground before we sit down to the computer, so that we can be more aware of physical reality.

Speaking of grounding – when we’re done surfing, perhaps we could use to take a moment to reconnect with real time and space. Have you considered that most of us tend to be a little spacey when we’ve been Facebooking for a while? Could that be because we’ve left our spirits partially wandering in astral realms? I suggest trying your favorite basic grounding technique to bring yourself back before heading off to do other things.

How about psychic protection? Most of us would never allow our spirits to wander without creating sacred space and engaging in whatever methods of psychic self-defense we find preferable. But we sit down to Twitter without this even crossing our minds once. Try it sometime, and see how much less you are offended by people being jerks in their posts with some psychic shielding on your side.

Which leads us to the subject of psychic attack. If we are astral-projecting, trolls are nothing less than spiritual bullies, assaulting our spirits with violent psychic energy. Cyber-bullying becomes soul-shattering abuse on the level of bad horror movies. I realize that sometimes people think it’s funny to harass each other and say really offensive things in type on YouTube, but maybe thinking about it this way might make you reconsider this position. Most of us would never stick pins into poppets to hurt others, so why would we try to hurt someone with our texted words?

There are deeper implications to this as well. It’s been an observation of mine that sometimes you just can’t find what you’re looking for while surfing, no matter how hard you try; and other times, you type three letters into Google and exactly what you want pops up as though it were magickally conjured. Well, who’s to say it wasn’t? In the astral realms, most of us have at least one guide or helper who lights the way. It occurs to me that it might be a good idea to befriend a “cyberspace guide” to aid my searches and research, and to keep me from getting lost.

In that same vein, one could also hypothesize that there must be other entities in cyberspace; ghosts in the machine, as it were. For example, what happens to all those lost messages? Are they random computer glitches, or were they stolen by the modern equivalent of gremlins? And I imagine the counterparts of brownies are out there as well, helpfully correcting our mistaken URLs and misaddressed emails.

So if this is true, then it is also true that one can create pocket-realms in the wider landscape of cyberspace. Certainly Second Life and Minecraft players do it all the time. We used to do it in BBCs and IIRCs and Yahoogroups and forums. We can still do it in Facebook groups but it takes more work because Big Brother is much more interested in what we’re up to. Try warding against trolls and building an astral temple to go with your coven Facebook page, and see what happens.

And if that is true, just like with the formation of thoughtforms and egregors, we can, intentionally or unintentionally, create ideas in the cyber-realm and give those things shapes and manifestations. So maybe we should all stop feeding into this Slenderman delusion and intentionally form something a little bit more positive and helpful, don’t you think?

Also remember, those of you who work magick in your practice that anything that you give your time and thought to in the Astral Plane is formed there, and then it begins to work to manifest itself in the physical world. So perhaps it’s best that we stop feeding trolls (as most internet savvy people will advise these days anyway) and spend more time building networks of productive, useful people who are trying to make the world a better place. Also, if you spend all your time online freaking out about the abuse of animals, carbon footprints or the tyranny of the 1%, you give it power. Now, I’m not saying you should close your eyes and ignore it all – we know these are realities in our world and we need to do something about them. What I am saying is that while you are online and creating things in the Astral Plane, if you care about these causes, maybe you should spend more time working on solutions and creating positive forces for change, than being afraid and complaining about the problem. I don’t think most of these issues still exist because people aren’t aware of them; I think it’s because people think there’s nothing they can do. But those who do magick as part of their practice know better; even though the gods help those that help themselves.

Sable Aradia (Diane Morrison) has been a traditional witch most of her life, and she is a licensed Wiccan minister and a Third Degree initiate in the Star Sapphire and Pagans for Peace traditions. A writer, musician, herbalist and crafter, she makes her living through writing, psychic readings, music, teaching, and making things. Author of "The Witch's Eight Paths of Power: A Complete Course in Magick and Witchcraft," (Red Wheel/Weiser 2014) she also writes "Between the Shadows: the Craft of a Liminal Witch" at Patheos' Pagan channel. Her channel on YouTube features her music, instructional witchcraft videos, and her many projects in the world of geekdom. She just also just opened an Etsy store at http://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/SableAradia. She lives in Vernon, BC, Canada with her two life partners and her furbabies in a cabin on the edge of the woods.

Comments

What an interesting and thought-provoking blog! I like the detail with which you've developed your thoughts.

Your advice is solid, grounded, and very useful.

In fact, I'm going to use your analogy (which is not just an analogy, but a transition of thinking from one realm to another) as I teach my own students - both in the realms of energy work and dance.

You are absolutely correct when you say that our activities - including those online - both generate and feed thought-forms.

Let me add just one point in support of what you're saying.

In one of my blogs (oriented towards emerging authors and entrepreneurs; www.mourningdovepress.com), I reference Sun Tzu's The Art of War a great deal. In fact, that is my primary guideline for developing online marketing and publicity campaigns. But the person doing online work today needs a "Rosetta Stone" to connect Sun Tzu's ideas to marketing, Tribe-building, blogging, etc.

The connection is that our thoughts are our armies. As we develop our thoughts (your blog is a good example, you've just developed a thought; actually a good set of them), it's like deploying a squad or a platoon.

Because thoughts deployed on the internet (blogs, etc.) have persistence - as your blog does now - the squad or platoon just developed exists not just as an entity on the web, but also as a well-developed and cohesive thought-form. (Especially true in your case, as you put care and attention into this post.)

So, the squad or platoon now moves forward, capturing territory - which is, in today's analogy, influencing people's minds. The thing is: it's not just on the internet, it's a cohesive thought-form-group.

I am an admirer of Sun Tzu, and I like your analogy as well; thoughts as armies, directed thoughts as troop deployment. I think I'll check out your blog; sounds like your advice would be helpful! Thanks for your comments and I'm glad you enjoyed the post.

·

Laine
Friday, 17 January 2014

That was a marvelous article, and as someone who has often had trouble keeping herself safe emotionally while scanning the Internet, I am going to take your advice to heart and try it out. Thank you!